


Snapshot

by ap_trash_compactor



Series: Instant Film [1]
Category: Star Wars: Thrawn - Timothy Zahn
Genre: F/M, Modern AU, to the extend that is even the right way of describing an AU in star wars terms?, whatever they all live in DC and work for or in the orbit of the us federal gov't
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-01
Updated: 2018-07-01
Packaged: 2019-05-31 19:21:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15126194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ap_trash_compactor/pseuds/ap_trash_compactor
Summary: Taking portrait shots of Higher Skies Public Relations' clients isn't what Arihnda Pryce expected to be doing for a living. Her latest portrait subject isn't want she expects, either.





	Snapshot

**Author's Note:**

> I honestly expected this story to be porn but, oddly enough, this isn't what I expected, either! :D (I think it's okay, though.)

“Just a quick shoot,” her friend Juahir is saying into the phone, “just get something for the book jacket. I know you can fit it in; it shouldn't take more than a couple of hours.”

 

“I’ve got a couple hours free next week” Arihnda says. “Can you send me the details? And if you could send me something he’s written —”

 

“I know, I know — you like to be thorough,” Juahir says. “I’ll put an appointment on your calendar, and I can bring a copy of the book home tonight.”

 

Arihnda’s always had a keen eye — never generous, but always keen — and using it well requires study. She photographs most of the clients of the Higher Skies public relations firm; Driller had brought her on to help consult for a mining company two years ago, discovered she knew how to take a good portrait. Since then her part-time hobby had become her full-time job. She’d taken the job with Higher Skies because she’d thought it would give her a way into politics; so far it hasn’t, but she likes her work well enough. Portrait sessions are a kind of hunt for her: she's hunting the image that her subject’s audience will want to see. And she starts every hunt by learning about her prey.

 

~~~

 

The book Juahir gives her is a cheaply bound galley proof. The cover is white, and the title is printed plain in black text:  _ The Cultural Roots of Strategic Difference _ . The author’s name is printed plainly below it, a few font sizes smaller. It looks difficult to pronounce, and is bracketed by what Driller always calls “alphabet soup.” The particular stew of letters here tells her that he's a military officer with an advanced academic degree. So: an obscure and ambitious book for a technical and ambitious audience, by an obscure and presumably ambitious person. Arihnda thinks she knows the type.

 

“Did you call that guy?” Juahir says, handing Arihnda a foam container from the sushi place Juahir always orders from.

 

“What guy?” The container holds shrimp shumai, a double order, Arihnda’s usual.

 

“The guy whose number — Ottlis, the hot guy from my gym.” Juahir has a large bowl of eel teriyaki, vegetables, and rice.

 

“Oh, no,” says Arihnda. Then she adds: “Not yet, I mean.”

 

“Arihnda —” says Juahir, exasperated, head in the fridge — “you have got to get out a little.” Juahir emerges from the fridge. “Here, have a beer. You can't stay single forever. I'm trying to help out.”

 

“I know you are. I’ll call him next week.”

 

~~~

 

The book, it turns out, is neither obscure nor overly technical. It's deeply researched, detailed, and obviously expert — but it's also clear, accessible, and elegantly written. Arihnda finds herself reading it with real interest, occasionally stopping to note a passage that, to her surprise, seems to elucidate or explain some aspect of society or social interaction she'd never noticed before. And, sometimes, she finds herself stopping to note a turn of phrase that is simply... beautiful.

 

It's a rich text, but not a very long one. She finds she has time to read it twice before the shoot.

 

She spends all her free time reading, in fact, and doesn't call Ottlis at all. 

 

~~~

 

The trip from D.C to Quantico Marine Base is easy enough. She pays a little extra for the business class seat on the Amtrak and curls up with a coffee and a paper for the trip.

 

There are not many people making the trip with her on a Thursday in the middle of summer, but her fellow commuters seem nice enough — and they all seem to know each other. They are all badged and tagged and familiar with each other like a subspecies of wild animal.

 

The train deposits them at a small postage stamp of a station on the edge of a small postage stamp of a town. The little town - a couple dozen blocks square, extends to her left. The base is a few dusty blocks to her right. Her fellow travelers all go left — to little federal-funded research outposts, she imagines.

 

Alone, she passes first to and then through a large black metal gate, left open and unguarded, and onto the base. It seems completely empty. There are a few cars, some silent, boxy suburban-industrial buildings, and some tin-sided warehouses from which fans blow the reek of spray paint into the road. It is, for a good five minutes of walking or so, like a ghost town.

 

Then she sees the first hints of her destination: Marine Corps University.

 

This is likely the reason the base is so ludicrously easy to enter. There are no secrets here, no weapons, no plans or blueprints. This is a place of learning.

 

And it feels like one, too. The uneven, dusty gravel gives way to smooth asphalt, even concrete sidewalks, and sweeping manicured lawns. The streets cross one another in little roundabouts. The lawns are dotted with trees. In the distance, she sees low red brick buildings clustered together. She starts to see people, too: middle aged men in crisp fatigues, carrying portfolios and and briefcases, moving briskly, usually alone. She sees students too, burdened with backpacks, their uniforms less crisp, moving more slowly, usually in twos. If not for the uniforms, she might be at any small, rural university. She wonders idly what classes students might take here in summer.

 

She’s supposed to meet a man at the entrance to the main campus. She sees him, standing patiently outside.

 

“Are you — Colonel Yularen? Am I pronouncing that right?”

 

“Absolutely. And you can call me Wullf. We're headed right this way.” He leads her through two sets of glass doors, through an echoing lobby, through another two sets of doors into another broad, grassy courtyard. He’s leading them, she sees, towards a lower, older building, hidden away, one whose red brick facade is pocked and faded with age. “We're just borrowing this office, I hope you don't mind — the Lieutenant is only assigned to this base temporarily. It's for the interservice Wargaming Initiative. Secretary Donasius’ memo is still making ripples, you know, and thank god for that. We finally got funding to expand the program.”

 

“Of course,” says Arihnda, who actually has no idea what Yularen is talking about. To be conversational, she says: “I liked the book.”

 

“Did you? So did I. Never seen something pass publication review so fast. There was a little dust-up over having USMC Press publish it instead of the Naval Institute, but that worked out alright.”

 

“Aren't the Marines part of the Navy?”

 

Yularen only laughs. Then he says: “Try telling us we aren't our own branch.” He opens the door for her; inside, the building looks worn. The floor is warped linoleum. The doors are all cheap, blonde wood, like an old primary school. There are interesting paintings on the walls, through. From the few plaques she reads, they seem to have been painted by soldiers. Most appear to be of Vietnam, or perhaps Korea. They are memories, perhaps — or nightmares. She is a little surprised by the decor. It is not vainglorious, as she expected; she has a sense that it is meant to memorialize shared sorrow.

 

“Anyway,” Yularen is saying, ushering her her up a flight of stairs, “I met the Lieutenant at a professional development conference last year; we were both in an Alternative Analysis working group. Liked him straight away. Wanted to have him assigned as a liaison for our new Wargaming Center — we’re renovating a wing of this building for it, and we’re hoping to run joint games with all the services. I thought his input would be invaluable just from the way he discussed developing enemy mindset, and then he sent me that manuscript. You have no idea how hard I fought to make sure he was assigned to us.”

 

This little monologue is more or less Greek to Arihnda, but she thinks she takes the general point. Yularen turns them down another hall, this one even more drab than the first. There are cork boards with relatively mundane office postings. One door has a large poster taped to it: a first-person point of view illustration of an office desk, and superimposed over it a dream-like image of a soldier at war. It says, in large comic-book letters:  _ What did you do today to save his life _ ? It strikes her as a little hokey, but it also reminds her of a line from the book:  _ A master strategist can secure victory without loss of blood, a great one without loss of life, and a good one with the minimum of either. It is therefore incumbent upon militaries to produce wise and intellectually flexible strategists, who can balance the need for victory with the moral imperatives of humanity — for strategists who excel at their task may be credited with saving the lives of both friend and foe alike.  _

 

“Isn't it a little unusual to have a civilian PR firm for something like this?” she asks.

 

“You can blame me for that,” Yularen says. “I admit I’m trying to help build the man’s reputation. He’s a bit… well, you’ll see. But I’ve decided to make it my business to make sure he has a real career.” He stops beside an open door. “Here we are,” he says. Then he goes in.

 

Arihnda follows.

 

“Thrawn,” Yularen is saying, to a tall, black-haired man who is bent low above a desk, scribbling a note on a piece of paper. The man is wearing working dress: the unpopular blue Navy camo that Arihnda sort of likes. His sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. He has elegant hands, elegant wrists, elegant forearms, and very smooth-looking skin that is a lovely shade of golden brown, like wildflower honey. “Thrawn, this is the publicist —”

 

Arihnda is about to correct him, when the man at the desks stands up, and for a second all the mechanisms inside Arihnda stop.

 

When her brain re-engages a moment later, it offers up the descriptor “ _ ludicrously good-looking _ .” 

 

He is probably six-foot-four; he is marvelously proportioned, she thinks, and has an ease and grace in his body that is instantly attractive — he has a reserve too, a sort of quietude, that is also a little alluring. His face is  _ absurdly  _ perfect: elegant chin and jaw, lush mouth, strong but proportional nose, perfect brows, intense grey-green eyes, cheekbones that could cut glass. She can't really tell what he  _ is,  _ ethnically speaking: Eurasian or Central Asian, maybe? But that's also not her business.

 

Her business is capturing the correct image of him to fit the brand that's right for his book. And her business, she realizes, is going to be a little harder than she expected.

 

The book he's written won’t be packaged or sold as sensualism. She has to find some way of photographing him without making him look utterly erotic — but as he moves from behind the desk, graceful like a dancer, that's really all she sees.

 

“Lieutenant Mitth’raw’nuruodo,” he says, pronouncing the unpronounceable name that belongs to no language group she knows. “You may call me Thrawn.” He is holding out a hand to her, and she is almost slow to take it.

 

“Ah — Arihnda Pryce. A pleasure.”

 

“Likewise, Miss Pryce.”

 

Her brain catches up to something else. She  _ may  _ call him Thrawn, as if he’s giving permission. And  _ Likewise.  _ And  _ Miss Pryce.  _ She sees why Yularen thinks he might need help with his reputation and career. He has a faint accent she can't place, but she doesn't think his diction is a problem of facility with English: it's just his manner. It's his whole… demeanor. She’ll have to moderate the way that comes across in his portrait, too.

 

And of course, it's time for her to start working on that portrait.

 

“Is this what you’re authorized to wear?” She asks, moving her chin a little to indicate his uniform.

 

“Colonel Yularen suggested that the Working Uniform would he appropriate,” he says politely, “but if you prefer I also have permission to wear Service Dress White.”

 

She  _ does  _ want to see him in that, but she agrees with Yularen. “No, this is good,” she says. Anything to make him look a little earthier, a little more average. “I’d like to start with just a few snapshots if you don’t mind — to let me figure out the lighting, and get a good look at you.”

 

Being the subject — indeed, the object — of the artist’s gaze often makes people uncomfortable. Many of her subjects, men especially, have anxiety about it, and try to diffuse their own tension with suggestivity, as if making the subtext into text will give them back their sense of power and control. Many men do this by trying to flirt with her at the beginning of a session; if they are relatively inoffensive about it, she will sometimes flirt back a little. Good rapport usually leads to better pictures.

 

There is a very small, very wry curve in the corner of Thrawn’s mouth that tells Arihnda he is perfectly aware of the inherently suggestive aspects of his submitting to objectification through the lens of her camera, but aside from quirking one of his brows just a little — gracefully — he doesn’t mock or flirt. Instead he says, with perfect seriousness: “Should I ignore you until you decide how you want me, then?”

  
  


“Ah —” she says. Her mind very quickly serves up several ways she might want him. “Ah, yes,” she says a little gruffly. “Yes, that would be fine, thanks.”  

 

The little curve in the corner of his mouth becomes somewhat more pronounced. “Very well,” he says dryly. His voice is quite deep, and very… pleasant. Smooth and precise, like — she cuts off that comparison quickly.

 

Then she sets about ignoring him as best she can herself, putting her bags down and getting her camera out. She usually brings two backups, just in case, but she has a favorite, and she thinks it likes her back.

 

Yularen steps beside her. “Do you have everything you need?”

 

“Oh,” she says, turning to him, “yes. I think I’m alright. My train leaves around mid-day. Do you want to look at the shots before I leave, or —?”

 

“No, you can send them by email for review. Just ask the Lieutenant to show you out, if you need it — I’m afraid I’m tied up in meetings the rest of the day.”

 

“Oh, of course. Driller will follow up, obviously.”

 

“Good. Been a pleasure, of course. And good luck.” 

 

~~~

 

Thrawn does not, in the end, ignore her at all.

 

He does an exceptionally good job of continuing on with whatever his own work was, but Arihnda knows when people know that they are being watched — and he adjusts himself, very subtly, here and there, for her camera. Expertly, almost. He does it without ever quite acknowledging her, but if she moves, he moves a little too: small movements of his shoulders, neck, chin. His microexpressions, his hands. Every shot she takes comes out looking… good. Very good. He’s helping to make them good.

 

And he looks  _ too  _ good in them. The clear line of his jaw. The cord of muscle that stands out in his neck when he turns his head. The curves of his mouth. The strange balance of sobriety and irony in his features. The subtle, soft creasing of skin where his jaw meets his neck, the creasing that reminds her that he is made of flesh, soft and pliant and real — 

 

None of the shots are usable. None of them are right.

 

She flips through the last two shots and makes an irritated sound, and he looks up at her from his place at the desk. “May I be of assistance?”

 

“Hm?” She looks up from her camera. “No, just — I’ll let you know.”

 

He rises from the desk, approaches, stops a few paces short of her. “May I see any of them?”

 

Arihnda has always been a little possessive of her work — a little weirdly secretive about it. She draws her camera closer to her chest on instinct, like a child asked to share a beloved toy — then corrects herself. The pictures are of  _ him _ , after all.

 

But her camera is her livelihood, and she is always reluctant to let others hold it. “Here,” she says, slipping the strap off her neck and holding it up. “So you don’t drop it.” He raises an eyebrow, and bows his head a little. Not enough: she still has to stretch her arms quite far up to slip the strap over his head. Her fingers brush his neck as he stands upright; his skin is soft and warm.

 

“Thank you,” he says. His voice is… almost grave and polite. Superficially grave and polite. But only superficially. There’s an undertone of irony, and the subtle curve is there in the corner of his mouth, and one of his brows is ever so slightly quirked. Then he turns his attention to the camera. He clearly knows how to use it: he doesn’t have to ask her how to find the gallery, or look through it.

 

Still feeling the echo of his skin against her fingertips, and feeling a little flustered, she draws back, draws her arms into herself: one wrapped around her middle, the other across her chest. She rests her thumb against her mouth, chews on it a little.

 

Then she hears the click of her camera. She looks up, almost startled, almost angry, mostly surprised, perhaps a little confused, and there’s another click.

 

He knows how to hold the camera, certainly. No lack of confidence in that. But it’s hers — she feels annoyance, insult, anger on her features. There’s another click. Then he lowers the camera from his face, looking at it studiously, flicking through the three shots he’s just taken. He steps closer to her, turns the camera so she can see. 

 

“What do you think?”

 

She looks down. The photograph she’s looking at is good.

 

Very good, actually.

 

It has — everything. Light, shadow, depth, a sense of —  

 

She’s curled into herself in the first picture. It’s not just physical: her eyes are downcast, expression distant. She looks… vulnerable, maybe? Certain curves are accentuated, which makes her body look almost soft, and the distant, unselfconscious expression on her face makes her look…

 

He flicks to the next photo. Her face is alive, here: the expression is complicated but… vibrant, somehow. He flicks to the next photo. She looks… Ferocious. She looks a little erotic herself, actually, as the subject of his gaze. 

 

And she knows better than most that the information a photograph conveys is neither luck nor accident.

 

She clears her throat. “You have a good eye,” she says, trying to sound professional.

 

“Thank you.” He is looking at her quite openly, studying her without pretense. “I think a great deal of your job must involve getting to know your subjects a little.”

 

“Yes.”

 

“We have not spoken much.”

 

“No,” she allows.

 

“Perhaps you would permit me to take a few more photographs? It might be instructive for you, as to my way of viewing things. I believe it is the photographer’s art, to look with another’s eyes — and to help others do the same?” That serious tone, laced with subtle irony. The request is, just barely, civil — but also a source of amusement for him.  _ She  _ is a source of amusement for him.

 

“I think —”

 

“If you don’t mind, of course,” he cuts over her. It’s said in a way that is clearly intended to tell her to submit to the suggestion.

 

Arihnda doesn’t  _ mind,  _ exactly, but she’s not precisely comfortable with the idea, either. She watches others; they don’t watch her.  “I’m not used to being in front of the camera,” she says. It’s a dodge.

 

“No? You have an excellent face for it, I think. Very expressive.” His comment and his tone both just, only just, toe the line of propriety. What’s worse, he’s toeing the line for fun — if leaping across it seemed more amusing, she’s sure he’d be doing that instead.

 

Arihnda feels a roiling thing — annoyance, frustration, perhaps desire yet unformed — stirring in her chest. She takes a firm sort of breath. “I really don’t,” she says. She holds out her hand: it is a gesture that does not admit of argument.

 

But for a moment she thinks he might give her one anyway.

 

Then he bows his head and slips the strap off his neck, and sets her livelihood back in her palm. She fusses with her camera a little, makes a decision. “Would you sit back at the desk please?” He does. “And — just sit back in the chair a little? Perfect. And would you smile —?” Oh. She’s not really surprised that it’s… it’s...  _ dazzling _ — stupid word, even more stupid since it’s correct — but — “Not that much. Just barely, just the corner of your mouth — perfect, thanks — like you know a secret I don’t know —”

 

“I imagine I know many things that you do not,” he says with perfectly innocent irony. And then he adds, quite lightly: “And possibly the reverse is true as well.”

 

She lowers the camera from her eye, looks at his face with nothing to mediate the space between them. His expression is mild, mildly curious, utterly innocent — except it’s really none of those things. Just beneath the surface it’s wicked and wickedly self-satisfied.

 

No, she decides. She can’t just  _ moderate _ his personality in the jacket portrait. She can’t moderate the way he uses himself as bait for his own entertainments. If she were selling a romance novel or a political biography, yes, that might work. But for what he’s written, she has to hide him almost completely.

 

“Get up for me,” she says. Only after she says it, in a voice that’s so low and certain of herself she almost doesn’t recognize it, does she realize that her command could be interpreted more than one way.

 

He raises his eyebrow in a way that tells her he hears the double-entendre perfectly. And then he stands with perfectly obedient grace.

 

“Go to the window,” she says. He does. “Stand like” — she makes a couple gestures with her own body, demonstrating. He mimics perfectly, standing with his feet shoulder width apart, back straight, arms crossed across his chest. “Now turn your head like —” she demonstrates, he copies. “Perfect.” She takes a few shots.

 

It’s good, but lacking something.

 

“Can you — keep the pose but look at me? Just give me your eyes.” He quirks an eyebrow, looks straight at her — then does as she’s asked. The effect is perfect — he looks like she’s caught him in a moment of thought, but the sort of moment a man in his job might be expected to have, not… He looks like the author people will want to see, and not like the boundaryless, dangerous, self-indulgent thing he really is. 

 

“That’s it,” she says.

 

He drops his arms, looks at the camera. “May I see?”

 

She doesn’t give him the camera this time. She just turns it so he can see the screen. He moves closer to her — possibly just to get a better view. Possibly not just for that reason. “Interesting,” he says to the camera. Then he turns his head a little, and looks at her. She can feel his gaze. “How did you come to be interested in photography?” he asks.

 

And that is a very personal question. Strange that she isn’t asked it more often.  _ How did you get this job _ , is the usual phrasing — and it usually feels less personal. Less intimate.

 

She clears her throat. “It was — when I was ten, we went on a family vacation. My father gave me his Polaroid 600 — I took pictures of everything —” She pauses, then adds, almost to herself: “It’s still my favorite camera. I still have it.”

 

“Do you indeed?”

 

She coughs, and gestures at nothing with the DSLR in her hands. “I’ll send this one and a few others to Colonel Yularen. I’m sure your internal publicity people will want to have a say.”

 

“I am sure they will choose as you have,” he says politely. “Do you require assistance finding your way back to the station?”

 

“No,” she says too quickly. “That’s alright. I know the way.”

 

“I see.”

 

It only takes her a moment to gather her things. He watches her, and she feels herself being watched.

 

“Thank you for your time,” she says when she’s finally ready to leave. Thanking him only seems odd once she’s said it. 

 

Usually clients thank her.

 

He says: “Of course. It was my pleasure.”

 

~~~

 

The military publicists, or censors, or whatever they are, do, in the end, choose the picture she likes.

 

A couple of weeks after that, Juahir comes home with a funny look on her face.

 

“Did you ever call Ottlis?” she asks.

 

“No,” says Arihnda. “Why?”

 

“Okay. I just — Driller asked me to ask you…”

 

“Why does Driller care if I called some guy from your gym?”

 

“No, that’s not what he — no, Yularen called Driller and asked…”

 

“Juahir, what the hell are you trying to say?”

 

“That guy — the strategy guy — he wants to take you out to dinner.”

 

“What?”

 

“I guess he asked Yularen to ask Driller to ask you. I guess he didn’t want to put any pressure on you by asking directly? Or maybe he wanted to put a lot of pressure on you by making a bunch of people ask for him. Anyway, Driller asked me to ask and I thought — if you’re going out with Ottlis —”

 

“I would have told you, and I’m not. Look, I don’t want to play a game of telephone. I’ll ask Driller for his direct contact info tomorrow.”

 

~~~

 

She doesn’t use his phone number for another two weeks after that.

 

She flips through the book again.

 

She spends a little time looking at the photographs she took of him.

 

She spends a great deal of time looking at the photographs he took of her. She’d almost deleted them — almost. And then she’d saved them for herself, instead.

 

Finally, she dials the number.

 

She paces her room while the phone rings.

 

She gets voicemail.

 

She almost hangs up.

 

Then she says: “Hey, it’s — uh— It’s me. It’s Arihnda. I wanted — call me back.”

 

He calls her back five minutes later.

 

~~~

 

The Old Ebbitt Grill is more cliche than chic, but she’d told him it was her favorite. And it is. It was the first place she’d taken herself to dinner after moving to the city — it had meant a great deal to her, when she thought she’d break into politics via publicity, to eat at a place that seemed  _ classic,  _ to feel like she had  _ permission  _ to eat there.

 

She hasn’t broken into politics after all, but she still likes the bar here, the old polished wood, the feel of the place.

 

She’s about fifteen minutes late — not her fault, a delay on the Green line, which she has to take from all the way out in Petworth, where she and Juahir split an apartment. The host shows her to her table — it’s as private a table as can be hoped for on a reasonably busy Friday night, and must have been requested specially. She’s too busy looking at the crowd, taking in the room — a reflex — to notice him until they’re close.

 

He’s wearing Service Dress White.

 

She doesn’t miss a step when she sees him, but it’s a near thing. She knows enough to know that the uniform he’s wearing is neither necessary nor entirely appropriate. It’s a piece of theater, like the little adjustments he’d made for her camera when he was supposed to be ignoring her. It’s a show, put on for her.

 

He doesn’t rise to greet her, or speak at all until after the host as pulled her chair out for her, wished them good evening, and departed.

 

“So,” he says when she is seated and they’re alone, “you are finally here.” It is gently ironic, but genuinely critical, too.

 

“Yes,” she says, a little terse, a little defensive. “Thank you for waiting.”

 

“It was no trouble. I was glad to hear from you.”

 

“Yes,” she says. “I… I didn’t know if I should call you back, honestly.”

 

He looks at her evenly. “No? Are you feeling some regret?”

 

“No. And I hope I won’t.”

 

He raises an eyebrow. “I hope that as well.” Then he gives a very small, very sly half-smile. “I took the liberty of bringing you a gift.”

 

“You — you did. You did?”

 

“Indeed.” He gestures to the table — the box isn’t small, exactly, but she hadn’t really been paying attention to much after she’d seen him in his whites. The box is also white — or rather, it’s wrapped in plain white gift-wrap.

 

She looks at him a little quizzically. “Thank you,” she says, almost a question, a little wary.

 

“Are you sure you wish to thank me?” The dry, ironic half-smile is still there, all self-indulgent amusement. “You do not know what it is yet.”

 

“Do you want me to open it now?”

 

“Indeed I do.”

 

She only hesitates a moment. She feels he probably wouldn’t have gotten her anything too humiliating — but she thinks she wouldn’t put it past him past him to do something mildly perverse for his own gratification.

 

There’s nothing perverse about the contents of the box, though — not on its own, anyway.

 

Within the white gift-wrap is a box of Polaroid 600 film.

 

She holds it for a single, strangely delighted moment before looking up at him. “Thank you,” she says, quite sincerely. 

 

And he smiles. The dazzling smile, only on halfway. It makes her heart trip once in its paces. “You are most welcome,” he says.

 

There’s nothing perverse about the object in her hands on its own, but — 

 

She sets the box down. “Did you want me to use them for anything in particular?”

 

One of his brows arches fantastically. “I thought if you were amenable we might take the opportunity to show each other how we view things.”

 

For a split second, Arihnda almost feels awkward, almost says no. It’s very obvious what he’s suggesting, and she’s flattered, and she likes the idea, but she doesn’t take men home. And she rarely gets taken home by anyone. And she doesn’t think  _ he _ has a convenient place to go.

 

And then she decides it will only take one short trip to the ladies room for her to get Juahir on the phone and tell her to go crash at Driller’s for the night — or maybe the whole weekend.

 

“Yes,” she says, running a finger along the edge of the box. “I think I could be amenable to that.”


End file.
